Women in Tabi'atstan
Women in Tabi'atstan actively participate in everyday life and numerous socio-political fields, with their situation having vastly improved since the end of the Tabi'atstani Civil War, the establishment of communist rule, and the subsequent Absolute Revolution. History Family and domestic life Marriage Divorce Some of the first Tabi'atstani laws to be put in place dealt directly with the family and the institution of marriage; for instance, in 1923 decrees called for the legalisation of a civil marriage, monogamy, that marriages should be entered into freely by mutual consent, equality for men and women in all aspects of family life, free divorce on request of both parties, state protection of motherhood, and equal rights for children, regardless of whether they were born within or outside registered marriages. These laws were laid out not so much to destroy the bourgeois family unit, but more to replace patriarchal authority with the authority of the state, which was the entity that families would now primarily depend on. In 1931, the code of law of marriages was amended, with the most important provisions being the recognition of de facto marriages (with evidence of a de facto marriage being cohabitation, the acquisition of joint property during the period of cohabitation, a declaration of marital relations in the form of a letter or other document witnessed by a third person, and also, depending on circumstances, mutual financial help, joint child-rearing, and so on), the introduction of the concept of "jointly acquired property" and the equal division of such property between the spouses after divorce, the simplification of the process of divorce (now it was enough to have an application from one party, whilst under the 1923 decrees an application had to be certified by both parties), and payment of alimony for one year after a divorce. Politics Education Military There are believed to be an estimated 250,000 women serving in the Tabi'atstani Revolutionary Army. During the Second World War, around 800,000 women were drafted into the armed forces, but many left the military after the war ended. The 1967 Universal Military Duty Laws recognised that women were a good source of soldiers if large scale mobilisation was to be enacted, but despite this and the fact that women were viewed equally with men under the law, there were numerous unofficial obstacles for women's careers in the military, with several military academies barring them from study. In 1992, the military reaffirmed women's right to work in combat units, and the number of women officers increased to roughly 2,400. In particular, women are often trained as snipers, as they are considered by many commanders to be more patient, careful, and deliberate. There is also an all-female detachment in the DMI Spetsnaz consisting of 50 women, primarily tasked with intelligence gathering and guiding assault units during raids, and women serve in other mixed-gender Spetsnaz units. Additionally, beginning in the 2000s the Airborne Troops have recruited female officers to command paratrooper formations. Health and reproductive rights The new communist government was strongly interested in motherhood, seeing it as a state function for which mothers should be rewarded and thus believing that mothers' bodies were valuable vessels that the state had a genuine interest in, and believing that children should be brought up as communists. The state was to grant women an equal position as men in the workplace, and to remove the burdens of housework and child care from them. This suggested that maternity was no longer a private matter, but also indicated that the communists considered motherhood to be the "natural" destiny of women, revealing a comparatively conservative outlook. Contraception Abortion In 1930, laws were passed only permitting women to have abortions after their cases had been analysed by a special commission, and in 1936, abortion was completely banned in Tabi'atstan. At the same time, a rewards system was established with mothers of ten children being given the title "Heroine Mother". As part of the Absolute Revolution, attempts were made to fully socialise childcare, with the ideological justification being that this allowed for the inculcation of communist values in children and also freed up time for mothers to work that would otherwise be used for caring for their children. As such, 24 hour nurseries were formed and wet nurses were recruited, although the shortage of both meant that this project had to be abandoned. In 1954, Lyudin reversed his previous decision to ban abortion, due to the fact that many women were having illegal abortions outside of hospitals with the government's view being that it was better to allow abortions again rather than allow this dangerous situation to continue. An abortion is considered illegal is it is performed outside a hospital or by someone with no higher medical education, or if the pregnancy exceeds 12 weeks in duration and there are no defined medical indications. An illegal abortionist may be sentenced to a maximum of eight years of hard labour, and as illegal abortions are considered a matter of national health, enforcement is stringent. Role in the economy Sexuality Women's Federation of Tabi'atstan See also *Gender and sexuality in Tabi'atstan Category:Tabi'atstan Category:Tabi'atstani culture